Nelson: Where has Jeff been? Let’s find out!
Howdy!
I was tickled when Codey asked me if I’d like to send in a column for this week.
It’s always fun catching up with folks who continue to say nice things about the stories over the years.
Then he told me why...
“I don’t have anything this week since it’s spring break...”
Okay, so maybe my name is “Fill” this week, but I’m not one to look that gift horse in the mouth.
A lot of water has run down Sugar Creek since we last chatted, so you might need a refill for the coffee or pull up a chair - we are going to be a little while.
I continue to be blessed with the opportunity to travel to most corners of the county, the conference and the country to cover sports on a wide variety of levels. Getting paid to do something you would do for free is the best job anyone could every have.
I also continue to meet simply spectacular student-athletes, and their coaches, at the local level. The amount of time and work that both groups put into their efforts are stories that I love to tell, and are so deserving of our time and energy.
We’ve had a few local athletes enjoy some success over the last year (or two) and a couple teams as well. It is an honor to be able to share some time with them.
I single out the Wabash basketball team as another example of this. Coach Brumett gave me more time than I deserved, and I spent maybe the best short hour of the year talking with the four seniors about their Wabash lives and the success they were having, and would continue having all the way to the Final Four.
It also gave me the opportunity to re-connect with the 1982 National Championship team, from Coach Petty all the way through the players. The highlight of a few Pacers games this season was talking with Chris Denari, who was on that team and is now the television play-by-play announcer, about the Little Giants. We never missed a chance to chat up the team, and a lot of our crew learned an awful lot about this team.
But hey, you read this far to see which airports I got stuck at, which storm turned a game into an adventure.
This past year I set a new personal record for nights spent sleeping in my car.
It was mostly weather-related, but it covers three sports.
Last fall, I was all over the place with football (more on that later) and that was my first opportunity for front-seat snoozing, but had nothing to do with Mother Nature.
My NFL game that particular weekend was in Chicago, so one would think easy travel.
Bad thinking.
First, my regular Fox crew was split up because of the World Series, so I was on loan to the crew in the Windy City, and I had told them I would drive up to work on game day.
What I didn’t know is that the Monday before, I got a call from another network needing me to work at a college football game on Saturday. Yes, the very next Saturday - the last year was one where schedules were very short-lots of dates arranged literally a couple days ahead. That is a huge change from the pre-pandemic way of doing things.
So, now I need to get to Minnesota for this Saturday game, and then get back to someplace close enough to drive to Chicago for the Bears game on Sunday.
Well, the solution seemed fairly easy - there are lots of flights to Minneapolis and back.
All I needed to do was find ones in the correct time slots.
Oh wait, did I tell you that I already had a Pacers game on Friday night that I was obligated to work at?
No, thought not.
So, I had to fit that into the front end.
And Saturday flying is even more difficult than in years past - not a lot of choices.
So, I had no way to fly from Indy to Minny on Saturday morning, work the game and fly back either Saturday night or Sunday morning in time to drive to Chicago.
It turned into a drive to Chicago and fly. That fit the flight schedule.
Except that it was a 6 a.m. flight out of Chicago, which meant a three-hour drive to get to O’Hare, after a Pacers game. I didn’t sleep in my car because I basically didn’t sleep.
But, I got to Minneapolis, covered the Gophers game and headed back to the airport, and caught an evening flight to Chicago.
Next problem - my Fox folks didn’t get the word that I was coming in on Saturday, so there was no room reserved for me.
So, I just drove down close to Soldier Field and parked under a tree. A few hours later, it was light out, and I went to work again.
You see how this is going!!!
But, I know you folks who have followed these stories are smiling, knowing that some things never change, and that Jeff can always find himself some travel trouble.
The next car-nap came in January, just after the NFL season had finished.
I was fortunate to pick up some games with CBS doing college basketball, and in fact, just spent last weekend in Milwaukee covering NCAA games.
But, that first game was a doozy.
It was a Saturday game scheduled for Lawrence Kansas, which is an hour west of Kansas City.
There was another Friday night Pacers game, but the weather turned into the culprit.
Recall that there was a nasty, nasty storm that hit the middle part of the nation (read Kansas City) that very weekend.
The forecasts were not good, and as we got into Thursday and Friday, more flights were getting canceled.
So, I ended up renting a car in Indy and left after the Pacers game, driving right into the teeth of that storm. I was fortunate in that I got a vehicle that turned into a great snow fighter.
My South Dakota (and other places) experience driving in bad weather and storms all paid off as I spent the entire night fighting my way to Kansas.
I finally got to campus around 5 a.m. and parked in a structure close to the arena. The security guy that tapped on the window at about 7 let me stay for a couple more hours, and I got to that game in one piece.
The last part was that, since my air travel had been canceled, my hotel was automatically canceled, so again, after the game, I had no place to go.
So, it was back in the rental and back to Indiana.
The roads were much better, but it felt like it took two days to drive back.
See, it was worth reading all this way!
There were a couple more nights after Pacers games when the roads back to Crawfordsville were not fit for man nor beast, so it was better to stay in the parking garage instead of fighting the elements. There was another game either the next day or two, so since it was getting easier and easier to sleep in the front seat, and I was packing better, I just stayed put.
There were plenty of bumps and bends in the NFL schedule last fall too, the trip to Chicago not counted.
As I mentioned, there were games all over the nation, although my crew didn’t get far west too often. There were a few trips where a Saturday afternoon college game made for tight or unique connections to an NFL city. Every stop involved something with a rental car, and since the rental car business was a bit crazy last fall, sometimes we were driving interesting vehicles.
Early in the season, it even involved buses taking some of the crew to stadiums. I found out that a old guy in a shirt and a tie with a network credential around his neck can actually get a 48-passenger bus inside a stadium without much other paperwork.
I also became the tail gunner in most of our crew “escapes” from stadiums. We were fortunate to get escorts away from said stadiums so folks on our crew who booked impossibly early flights could actually catch them. The flashing light folks were first, then one or two cars. I can follow closely, so I usually had announcers along, and off to the airport we would go.
There were moments just about every weekend, those things that would happen and I would think “well, there is my column for next week.”
Travel in many aspects was good. The year before, in the middle of the pandemic (when we actually got back to work) was more than unique, and will be the subject of books and post-graduate study for decades.
Last year, there were still plenty of restrictions, but for the most part, folks were used to the “new normal” and away we went. It will be interesting to see how things transpire this next season.
Speaking of which, there may be an upgrade for this stats guy come NFL season. More on that another time. There might also be some extra football work with the USFL coming up in a couple weeks, but we are still cobbling that together. I might be doing some of those games from my living room.
And, for the first time in three years, it looks like it is going to be a normal Month of May.
Wait, there is no such thing as a normal Month of May. That is what makes it so much fun.
It has been great to see so many folks at local sporting events, or at Elston Park, or wherever else we happen to run into each other. As I’ve said many times, I can’t begin to thank each and every one of you for the kind comments. It doesn’t seem like it was exactly two years ago that I wrote a “so-long-for-now” column as the world shut down. A lot of things have happened since then.
But, I seem to still find a little (or lot of) trouble when I hit the road.
Some things never change...
Thanks for spending a bunch of your Tuesday here, and thanks to Codey for saying “write as much as you want...”
Safe travels.
